I obviously don’t live in either market, however I did manage to see what was still-then a SCA owned Network Ten on the Mid North Coast about four years ago.
Even taking into consideration the obvious branding changes the network made in October 2018, I think I’ve got a reasonably good idea of what viewers in Regional Queensland, Southern NSW/ACT and Victoria should expect from July 1.
There’s really only one major difference I’d expect to see this time: Legally mandated “2 Minute Chicken Noodle” Local News Updates presented from Tasmania rather than Canberra…probably with graphics likely more resembling the current 10 News First look rather than the 2013-18 Ten Eyewitness News branding.
SCA has been outputting 10 HD Darwin/Spencer in brilliant quality for nearly a year now. From the joint Seven/Nine-owned NPC too. They were also doing it in NNSW before WIN took over. More than capable these days of being metro-grade quality, if not better.
I’m very surprised, as I certainly expected SCA would continue the affiliation deal - but if WIN are in a position where they are about to sell out anyway, a few percentage points now hardly matter. Though if you get half of WIN’s revenue while not owning them, why would you take on all of WIN’s costs for the other half?
I really hope WIN can reverse some of their news cutbacks and can be a landing place for some of the Nine Local News staff - now that WIN have the stronger Nine affiliation back. SCA would obviously go to just the bare minimum with a Ten affiliation, and Prime are too successful with metro news in many markets to attempt expansion.
I suppose Nine shareholders are the main winners here, but SCA’s dealings with Ten could be fruitful - SCA drawing on the better demographic fit between SCA radio and Ten, with a lower revenue share than the 50% for sure, then they could end up better off.
Is it known if WIN are restarting local news bulletins in cities where Nine is pulling out? Like Wagga Wagga, Central West, Albury or Fraser Coast?
Perhaps Prime7/Seven might be the only show in town in some cases and will help them gain back viewers in three-cornered contests like Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton and Sunshine Coast.
I have a friend who works at 9 in regional Queensland, and she said staff were told today WIN won’t be opening up newsrooms in areas where WIN doesn’t currently broadcast local bulletins. They were told if they want a job, they’ll have to be prepared to relocate to a metro newsroom.
WIN is under no obligation to open up newsrooms. They’ll undoubtedly be cost cutting where they can.
They’ve been running the “Save Our Voices” campaign for months now. We’ve already got one voice about to be silenced and I think there’d be an uproar if WIN decided to go down a path that saw them reduce local news coverage even further by adopting the Nine Local model. I do fear there may be cuts about to come considering the deal they’ve done with Nine requires them to hand over significantly more in affiliation fees.
Ray (the person running the Save Our Voices campaign) has a point, Local News is getting featured less and less all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if all we see is the metro news.
But the press release mentioned local news will remain. It was one of the reasons the affiliation deal went ahead. What are you basing your assumption on?
Well, take SCA Nine for example, their local news originally overlapped the hour long metro news, now, there is a half hour local news bulletin followed by the metro output. The deal states Local News remains, but if whats happened at SCA in the past is anything to go by, the local news will get less and less until eventually it will go completely…
